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Thursday, May 17, 2012

By Jacob Kipp,
Adjunct Professor at the University of Kansas, Eurasia Daily Monitor, Jamestown Foundation, 5/14/12 [reprinted
with permission]

The Arab Spring, especially the civil war in Libya and
NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” in that conflict, has brought about much
closer diplomatic cooperation between China and Russia. Their cooperation has
consequently increased in response to efforts by the United States, its allies,
and the Arab League under the banner of the “Friends of Syria” to bring about
the collapse of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria. In the latest sign of this
cooperation, Russian and Chinese ambassadors to the UN Security Council held
firm in their opposition to any resolution that calls for UN observers to the
cease fire in Syria and unilaterally condemned the Assad government. When the
resolution was changed to fit Chinese and Russian demands, it passed the
Security Council by a vote of 15 to none.

But beyond tactical cooperation over the crisis in Syria,
the major question is the following: What is the overall content of
Sino-Russian relations as President Putin begins his third term in office and
the People’s Republic of China (PRC) undergoes its own leadership
transformation? Some in Moscow see the current fall of Bo Xilai and his family
as a shift to the left in response to the corruption scandal, which has raised
questions about further conflicts within the Chinese Politburo during a period
of leadership transition (Krasnaia Zvezda, April 24). Dmitri Trenin, a
long-time commentator on Russian foreign policy at the Carnegie Endowment
Center in Moscow, has asked the question whether over the last decade
Sino-Russian relations have undergone a profound transformation to one of
“faithful friends.” Trenin acknowledges that the great shift in their relations
was the emergence of China as both a great power and an economic dynamo,
reshaping Asia’s role in the global economy. Russia has had to accept this
shift in the balance of power. China presents a set of opportunities and
challenges for Russia. “For today’s Russia, relations with China open up a
series of positive possibilities in the economic and political sphere: this
country can serve as a market for its raw materials, an engine of economic
development for the Russian Far East, and an important non-western partner in
the global arena,” Trenin writes (Dmitri Trenin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 2012).

At the same time there are serious challenges, especially
regarding Siberia, connected to relations with China; and there is, as yet, no
answer to them. Before Moscow can work out a long-term concept of relations
with Beijing, it must create a genuine development strategy for the country and
a concrete vision for Russia’s role in the world. As Russia has declined in
power, China has increasingly become the dominant regional power, surpassing
Japan economically, and has emerged as the major exporting power in the world.
Today, there is even discussion of China as the economic engine to overcome the
global recession and the source of capital to stabilize the crisis of the
Eurozone. In a multi-polar international system, Moscow and Beijing share some
common assessments of international issues, such as a suspicion toward Western
humanitarian intervention and a support for non-intervention in the affairs of
sovereign states. Russia, however, remains Eurasian in focus and, as Trenin
suggests, still has issues to resolve over its own economy, society and state.
Russia will have to yield to China’s assertions of rights and privileges around
its perimeter, even as these assertions carry risks of conflicts with other
states and powers (Trenin, Carnegie Moscow Center, 2012).

This is not to say that there are not concerns in both
Moscow and Beijing about the future of their relations. The Russian press
carried an extensive critique of the Russian economy as laid out by Chinese
experts. Strategy-2020, a report prepared for then President-Elect Vladimir
Putin, sees China as an economic challenge to Russia, “pushing Russia out of
its traditional markets and reducing its political weight” (Russia Today, March
19). The Russian press has also reported overt criticism from the Chinese
government on six major defects in the Russian economy, which limit Russia’s
ability to be a sound economic partner. These defects, which China expects
Putin’s administration to address include the following: 1) over dependence on
the export of raw materials and energy, 2) an unfavorable business climate and
the erection of barriers to investment, 3) complications of the situation with
regard to technology, science and business, 4) undeveloped competition and the
domination of natural monopolies, 5) the low level of the development of social
capital, the weak capacity for self-organization and for self-regulation of
private companies, and 6) no improvement in demographic indicators and a
serious shortage in labor (Nezavisimaia Gazeta, April 17).

There are also those who question Russia’s military
cooperation with China, especially the sale of advanced technology. Plans to
sell the advanced, fifth-generation Sukhoi PAK-FA fighter to China came in for
sharp criticism as a case of commercial profits trumping geostrategic common
sense (Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie, March 16). Aleksandr Khramchikhin,
writing in Nezavisimoe Voennoe Obozrenie, continuously warns of the pace of
China’s military modernization and the potential threat such forces represent
to Russia’s position in the Far East and Siberia (Nezavisimoe Voennoe
Obozrenie, December 30, 2011).

At the same time, there have been others proposing a much
closer strategic partnership, or even a military alliance between Russia and
China, overtly aimed at countering the US and NATO. Russian Army
Colonel-General Leonid Ivashov (retired) championed such a geostrategic
alliance when speaking at the meeting defense experts with Prime Minister Putin
in late February at Sarov, a former closed city associated with Russia’s
nuclear weapons program. Ivashov, the President of the Academy of Geopolitical
Problems and an ally of the “eurasianist” Aleksandr Dugin, spoke of the need
for the closest strategic ties with China to include active cooperation to
overthrow US geopolitical plans. Citing the German geopolitical thinker and
ideologue, Karl Schmitt, Ivashov suggested that Putin was beginning to
understand the need to counter US-NATO plans and went so far as to suggest an
agreement for the simultaneous launch of Russian and Chinese nuclear-armed
missiles in case of US-NATO aggression. Ivashov remains a fringe spokesman for
such views with the Russian elite (Nakanune.ru, February 27)

The general direction of Sino-Russian relations, however,
has been toward Hu Jintao’s “strategic partnership.” Two recent regional
developments address key aspects of this partnership. One is Putin’s emphasis
on the need to ensure the further economic development of the depressed regions
of Siberia and the Far East. One of Vladimir Putin’s chief priorities in his
electoral campaign was the development of this region. The new President’s
first priority is to restore Russia’s position as a world power, and the
development of Siberia and the Russian Far East is the key to achieving this
position (Novaia Gazeta, April 13). Thus, under Putin’s directive, the Ministry
of Economics drafted a new law covering the creation of a new state-owned company
that would operate under the President and undertake the economic development
of Siberia and the Far East, which would include 16 territorial units and 60
percent of the territory of the Russian Federation. The areas under the
administration of the new state-owned company would include a number of
republics and oblasts: the republics of Aktai, Burytia, Sakha (Iakutiia), Tyva
and Khakasiia, the Zabaikal’, Kamchatka, Krasnoiarsk, Primorsk, Kabarovsk and
Amur Krais, the oblasts of Amur, Irkutsk, Magadansk, Sakhalinsk and Evreisk, as
well as the Chukotsk Autonomous Region (Kommersant, April 20). The new state
corporation is expected to exist for 25 years and guide the integration of an
economically-developed Siberia and the Far East into the greater Asia-Pacific
economic region (Ural’skii Rabochii, April 21).

Critics have labeled the proposal “Putin's Dal’stroi” – a
reference to the Stalinist project under the direction of the NKVD for
industrial extraction of gold from Kolyma in the late 1930s. They have expressed
doubts about the project’s ability to attract long-term private capital
(Forbes.ru, April 22). Others have called it Putin’s “oprichnina” – a reference
to Ivan Grozny and his creation of, a territory outside of the existing
administrative order (zemshchina), a state within a state where Ivan and his
agents could do as they wanted and imposed a reign of terror (Moscow News,
April 23).

The second major development affecting the Russian-Chinse
“strategic partnership” has been the recent Sino-Russian naval exercises in the
Yellow Sea. Sino-Russian naval exercises are not new and have been going on
since 2005 under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).
The recent exercise, “Maritime Joint Action-2012,” however, had several unique
aspects (Nezavisimaia Gazeta, April 23). First, it took place on the 63rd
anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy and
recalled the early years of close collaboration between the navies of the PRC
and USSR. Second, the major tasks associated with this exercise were the
protection of sea lines of communications, air defense and anti-submarine
warfare, which relate to immediate problems of sea control. Third, it took
place at a time of increased tensions in the waters around China as a result of
conflicts over what state has sovereignty over areas containing possible oil
and gas reserves. In some of the disputed regions of the South China Sea China,
Vietnam and the Philippines have competing claims. Chinese warships currently are
patrolling the disputed Scarborough Shoal and Reed Bank in the South China Sea
where there are reports of oil and gas reserves.

The military-run PLA Daily took the start of the
Sino-Russian naval maneuvers as a good time to warn Washington not to interfere
in disagreements between the Middle Kingdom and its neighbors (Nezavisimaia
Gazeta, April 23). The Russian naval forces that joined Maritime Joint
Action-2012 came from the Pacific Fleet and Northern Fleet, which included the
ASW cruiser “Admiral Tributs” and two other support vessels that had just
completed a deployment in the Gulf of Aden as part of the international
anti-piracy operations there. This exercise, which was conducted in the Russian
language, ran until April 27.

Looking east, Putin sees both economic and a political
challenges. To play in the Asian century, Russia will have to develop the vast
resources of Siberia and the Far East, and this will require a population
dedicated to that task – something that Russia does not have. A long-term
strategy for a Russian role in Asia also requires a strategic partner. Due to
tensions with the United States over the Middle East and in the Far East,
Moscow seems to be moving closer to Beijing. We are seeing a return to great
power politics on the model of the 19th century, but with a very different axis
in Eurasia. Russia seems to have finally accepted the notion of an
Asian-Pacific century, where China will be a critical player and where Russia’s
role will depend upon the successful development of Siberia and the Russian Far
East.

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